9 Things To Do as a New IT Administrator in the First 30 Days – Part 3
We’ve reached the final installment in our “New Bank IT Administrator” blog series. After reviewing vendors, ensuring security and creating a solid disaster recovery program, it’s important for a new bank IT administrator to become extremely familiar with your bank’s processes and team. The final three steps will help communications and create a smooth and seamless transition for new bank IT administrators.
7. Examine the Network Infrastructure of Your Bank’s Branches
Determine how information comes and goes to ensure your portals and locations are all equally protected. For example, you might have two branches that share the Internet that comes directly from one of the branches. When you perform the audit you might discover that the firewall is not working the way it is designed to, creating a significant security hole. It is important to take the time to ensure all network systems and hardware are working correctly and that everything is secure within all branches. This process can also uncover policies that should be revised or updated, giving you the chance to provide the bank instant value.
8. Review Previous Exams at Your Bank
Become familiar with anything brought up within an IT exam that needs to be fixed or reviewed. Make sure you are able to put a plan in place to immediately address these issues as you will ultimately be responsible for the next audit.
9. Work Closely with Your ISO and CTO in the First Five Days
Have a list of questions and points to go over with your information security officer and CTO during your initial meetings. This will help uncover previous pain points the bank has been experiencing, objectives moving forward and expectations for your role. This will also set priorities in place for the next 30 days to a year and will ensure the entire team is on the same page.
In addition to the meeting with your bank’s technical management team, you should also set up meetings with key vendors, which might include, the core vendor, loan origination software vendors, backup solutions vendor, security provider, the IT managed services provider and the hosted email vendor.
By following these important steps, a community bank’s new IT administrator should have all the tools he/she needs to succeed. Taking inventories of hardware/software, reviewing vendors, double checking security measures and creating solid relationships are all important measures to ensure both the IT administrator and the bank thrive.